Towns, water district, brace for drought

Longmont not likely to share its supply this year

LONGMONT -- Since January, Sean Cronin has had 80 requests for water assistance, about 27,000 acre-feet worth.

He's probably not going to be able to fill any of them.

"The lion's share of our water comes from the city of Longmont," said Cronin, the executive director of the St. Vrain & Left Hand Water Conservancy District, which gives information to members, helps resolve water disputes and supplies augmentation water for users who need more than they can get through their normal irrigation priority. "We maybe have an additional 200 acre-feet, max, we can add on. It really is a pittance compared to what Longmont has available."

And this year, Longmont doesn't have it available. This week, as a shield against possible drought, the city announced it wouldn't be renting any of its surplus water to the conservancy district this year.

Longmont's hardly alone. As of the end of February, severe drought conditions -- at best -- were still the rule for northeastern Colorado and the Front Range, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center. And in a state that's already semi-arid, that has many communities watching their water carefully.

For towns like Firestone, watching is all that can be done right now. The community's water comes entirely from its share of the Colorado-Big Thompson supply, the system that brings water from the Western Slope over the mountains to the Front Range and the Eastern Plains. In a normal year, the town can draw a 70 percent quota -- seven-tenths of an acre-foot for every share it holds.

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But the town won't know how much it gets this year until the quotas are set in early April. If that quota is set at 60 percent, or even lower, Firestone has some work to do.

"At a minimum, we're going to be out in front of people urging water conservation," said town manager Wes LaVanchy. "If things go to a .6 (quota), we are certainly going to need to work through what steps we need to take."

In a plan drafted last year, those steps involve voluntary watering limits and similar conservation measures until the town's water supply gets below 110 percent of demand. At that point, the first mandatory restrictions go in, such as limiting businesses and homeowner's associations to three-day-a-week watering, or washing official town vehicles every other week. The restrictions gradually increase in severity; in a worst-case situation, any watering that's more potent than a hand-held hose can be forbidden.

The neighboring town of Frederick is in a similar position. Until the CBT quotas come in, town manager Matt LeCerf said, the town won't really know how much it needs to do.

"We may do nothing, but we may put up mandatory restrictions," LeCerf said. "It's all really based on the quota."

He said the town would take action within 30 days of the CBT quotas. Nearby Dacono, meanwhile, will be discussing watering restrictions Monday night that would take effect April 1, limiting watering to three days a week (which dates would depend on the address) and not during the hotter parts of the day.

Restrictions can be tricky, though, even for a town that's not completely dependent on the CBT. Lyons town administrator Victoria Simonsen remembered how in 2012, the town decided to limit watering. To make enforcement easier, half the town was allowed to water on "even" days, the other half on "odd" ones.

Only one problem: Most Lyons residents had already been on an every third-day schedule.

"It actually added water use," Simonsen said. "This time, we'll encourage twice a week, whenever that might be for a home. We'll let the neighbors rat on each other, instead of us worrying about it."

More effective, she said, was a town effort to track down leaks and bad meters. That wound up saving millions of gallons, Simonsen said, sometimes in odd places. One meter had a leak that ran down the base of a cliff, unseen. In another case, an underwater lawn spigot that was thought to have been disconnected was actually running full-blast.

Lyons also has the advantage of being able to use river water from the St. Vrain to keep up the nearby parks.

"It waters the parks, then gets absorbed through the groundwater system and back to the river," Simonsen said.

And what about St. Vrain/Left Hand? It may have to get creative. Even with water rented from Longmont -- typically about 3,600 acre-feet -- there wouldn't be nearly enough to meet everyone's request, even assuming that people are fudging on the high side to be safe. (Leaving out the biggest users, a typical request so far this year is for about 216 acre-feet of help.) Without that Longmont water, the district has to focus on communication, helping users who have a little extra water get in touch with users who need it.

And beyond that? Well, rain dances aren't being turned down. And the recent weather forecasts, with their chances of rain or snow through at least Saturday, are more than welcome.

"Snow is great," Cronin said. "It's our reservoir. But there's also timely rains. That can really turn things around ... it revives everything."

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